12 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



parasite, host, messmate, or the hke, and intimate chemical relations may exist, as we 

 find to obtain between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom, as a whole. More- 

 over, as we now view the case, all these multitudinous living creatures are, so to speak, 

 related by "blood." The knowledge which we gain from one is commonly applicable 

 to its nearer relatives and frequently to a long series of other forms. Hence the futility 

 of endeavoring, even on economic grounds, to restrict our investigations to food fishes 

 or other animals of obvious commercial importance. What we learn from the study 

 of a minnow is, in the great majority of cases, quite as applicable to a mackerel or a cod. 

 But the minnow is easier to obtain and easier to manipulate. Thus it is that we find 

 a staff of experts, under Government employ, devoting themselves, in many cases, to 

 the study of obscure and apparently insignificant forms of life. 



A full account of zoological explorations in the coastal waters of New England 

 would occupy a volume of considerable size. As pioneers in this work stand forth the 

 names of Gould, C. B. Adams, Couthouy, Desor, Girard, and Storer; of Ayres, Stimpson, 

 Mighels, Leidy, and Louis Agassiz. A later period was inaugurated by the establish- 

 ment of the United States Fish Commission in 1871, and the commencement of the 

 mportant dredging explorations of Verrill and his colleagues. Beginning with the 

 shallower waters of the bays and sounds of New England, these naturalists extended 

 their observ^ations to the broad continental shelf, and finally to the depths of the ocean 

 beyond. The construction by the United States Fish Commission of the steamer Fish 

 Hawk in 1879 and of the Albatross in 1882 gave great impetus to the exploration of the 

 deeper waters off the North American coast; although work of the first importance in 

 this field had already been done by Pourtales and by L. and A. Agassiz with the Coast 

 Survey steamers Corwin, Bibb, Hassler, and Blake, and by Verrill himself with various 

 G6vernment vessels detailed for the service of the Fish Commission. 



Manv years ago. Woods Hole was selected by Prof. Baird as the most promising 

 spot upon our coast for the commencement of a scientific study of fisheries problems. 

 From the very outset he gathered about him a staff of naturalists of the type that was 

 dominant in that generation — men eager to seek out every living thing concealed be- 

 neath the waves, to describe and figure and name. Foremost among these was Addison 

 Verrill, who, with his colleague Sidney Smith and some others, was for many years 

 active in exploiting the marine fauna of New England. 



In spite of the previous observations of Desor and Adams and Gould and Stimpson, 

 and the elder and younger Agassiz, who had already made essays into the waters of 

 southern Massachusetts, Verrill and Smith found in Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay 

 an almost virgin field. We begin to realize the pioneer nature of much of their work 

 when we recall that even some of our most abundant and familiar species (e. g. , Chalina 

 arbuscula, Hydroides dianthus, Virbius zosiericola, Orchesiia agilis) were first described 

 in the Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound (1873), while others, 

 including some of our commonest ascidians, had been only recently described by Verrill 

 from specimens taken in the vicinity of Woods Hole. Indeed, the report of Verrill and 

 Smith, hasty and ill digested as it was, remains to this time our chief single reference 

 work upon the fauna of this section of our coast. 



That first inclusive list of local species has been much extended, it is true, partly 

 by the original authors themselves, partly by a younger group of naturalists, who have 

 prepared synopses and annotated lists of particular sections of the local fauna. Certain 



